Temperamentally different as they are, the playwright, screenwriter and Northwestern University professor Brett Neveu, a peppy, zigzaggy thinker and talker, has a lot in common with the formidable actor, musician and first-time film director Michael Shannon. The commonalities begin with a propensity to juggle more projects, more or less simultaneously, than would seem humanly plausible.
Their joint collaborations spring from the Chicago storefront theater mainstay A Red Orchid Theatre. That was where Neveu’s play “Eric LaRue,” a tense, mordantly comic drama about what Shannon calls “the aftermath of the aftermath” of a school shooting, had its world premiere 23 years ago. Shannon didn’t direct it, but he co-founded Red Orchid and found himself going back to see the company’s show several times, he said. “At that time Brett was just starting out as a playwright. I mean, we were all so young.”
A few hundred school shootings later, Shannon makes his film directorial debut with “Eric LaRue,” starring Judy Greer as Janice LaRue, the mother of a killer of three fellow students. Everyone in the presumably Midwestern town, based somewhat on Neveu’s Iowa hometown of Newton, wants Janice to snap out of it. Move on. Redirect her grief somehow.
The play and the film hinge on a well-meaning but terrible idea. Not one but two different religious leaders in town, representing their respective, rival church communities, vie for the spiritual honor of bringing together Janice and the mothers of her son’s victims in the same room, for an honest conversation about how they’re feeling about the tragedy.
Shannon’s now a resident of Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his wife and fellow actor Kate Arrington (who’s excellent in the role of one of the seething mothers) and their daughters. Neveu lives in Lindenhurst, Illinois, with his wife, artist Kristen Neveu, and their daughter. “Eric LaRue” premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and took two long years to find a distributor (Magnolia Pictures, ultimately). Partly it’s a matter of forbidding subject matter, though Neveu’s writing doesn’t fit conventional notions of how stories like this are treated. Partly, too, “Eric LaRue” took two years because the world and its screen industries — in nearly every economically and ideologically perplexed respect — don’t know where they are or how to proceed right now.
The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: Michael, “Eric LaRue” strikes me as eternally topical but not really primarily so. Also, it’s an eternal hard sell, and a generation older than it was when A Red Orchid Theatre first produced it.
Shannon: Yeah. It was the play we did right after we did Tracy Letts’ “Bug” in 2001. Guy Van Swearingen (the theater’s co-founder, along with Shannon and Lawrence Grimm) got to know Brett, called him up after Kirsten Fitzgerald (now the Red Orchid artistic director) did a reading at Chicago Dramatists. Guy was crazy about it. I had nothing to do with the Red Orchid production, except for going back to see it, like, seven or eight times.
Q: Brett, I remember having a wildly mixed response to the play right after I got to Chicago, 20-plus years ago. I’m not sure I really got what you were up to. The film adaptation makes me realize it’s topical but in ways that seem to have transcended what we usually think of as topicality. You wrote it not long after the 1999 Columbine school shooting, right?
Neveu: When we did it, back in the day, we had discussions around that idea of making sure it wasn’t just topical in a way that would, you know, fade quickly. I tend to write about things that are bugging me, and try to write stories that aren’t being told. Or told enough. But lately, just in the last few months, people seem to be gravitating towards what’s in the background of “Eric LaRue,” with what we’ve seen in the new series “The Pitt” and what happens in the British series “Adolescence.” I don’t want to give it all away, but those really wrenching situations. But people are responding. They’re watching. I don’t think audiences necessarily turn away from tough subject matter. These are real issues on our minds.
Q: In “Eric LaRue” there’s a queasy absurdity to a lot of what Janice endures from her husband, her pastor and just about everyone she knows. Have you heard from folks who basically say, How dare you mine this tragedy for even a speck of black humor?
Neveu: There’ve been a few questions, but they’re more open-minded, I think. They want to know why something in it strikes them funny in certain places. People are smart, they know that in dark situations, there’s a pressure valve, and it’s connected to a kind of absurdity. Michael and I think about this a lot.
Q: Michael, after you made “The Shape of Water” with Guillermo del Toro, you told me you were taking more and more of an interest on set in what was going on with camera decisions, the design of a boom shot, all of it. And now you’ve made your first film as director.
Shannon: Well, my interest in photography predates my film career. When I was a teenager I’d take a lot of pictures. My mom still has a lot of them, the black-and-white pictures I took. To me it’s terribly exciting to be in this space of figuring out where the camera should be, and what lens should be on it. I see the utility in it, the value of it. I can’t say I’m following in the footsteps of any particular director I’ve worked with. If anything, I’m inspired by someone I never had the pleasure of working with: Mr. David Lynch, no longer with us. I see some of his influence in “Eric LaRue.”
Q: I see that in how you chose to hold a reaction shot a little longer than usual, two, three seconds. Which is longer than 99% of the films would hold it.
Shannon: Yeah. I was very meticulous about that in the edit. It was all about frames. I was like, “OK, take three frames off. OK, put two back on.” If I could’ve split a frame in half, I would’ve done it. The rhythm of this film is not a happy accident. You can ask my editor. I trust my editor implicitly. But he’ll tell you, I was like a hawk.
Q: This material can be crushingly sad, but there’s zero melodrama in it. It’s not what people are used to seeing with this subject.
Shannon: I appreciate hearing that. That was important to me.
Q: Brett, what’s next? With you, that question usually leads to a pretty complicated answer.
Neveu: I’m working on a film project called “Brilliant Blue,” with nonprofessional actors, high school students, mostly, and a professional crew. It’s a training and mentoring research project, part of my tenure track at Northwestern. And it’s my directing debut! My daughter’s doing production design on it, and a lot of her friends are in it. What else … I’m working on a script called “Better World” with Michael and Judy, and also with Michael Patrick Thornton. I’m doing a documentary about my dad called “Infinite Lives,” and his being the world’s oldest consecutive video game player.
Then, let’s see, we’re doing my play “Revolution” at the Flea Theater in New York, it premiered at A Red Orchid in 2023. And I’ve got a new musical called “Behind a Clear Blue Sky” with Jason Narducy. We wrote the musical “Verboten” for the House Theatre right before COVID. Jason and Michael just got back from doing R.E.M. shows on tour. There’s more, but that’s enough for now. You know how I work. I throw a bunch of things against the wall, and this time seven of them kinda stuck.
Q: Michael, you’re doing Eugene O’Neill’s “Moon for the Misbegotten” in London at the Almeida this summer, and what else?
Shannon: I’ve got “Nuremberg” coming out, with Rami Malek, Russell Crowe, John Slattery and me. I’ve got “Death by Lightning,” which is a Netflix series, coming out. I play President (James A.) Garfield in that one. Nick Offerman, another Chicago guy, plays Chester A. Arthur. Matthew Macfadyen (as Garfield’s assassin, Charles Guiteau), Betty Gilpin, Shea Whigham. Great cast.
Q: This is stating the obvious, but it is not an easy time for any movie to find its audience —
Shannon: We just got off our weekly meeting with Magnolia for “Eric LaRue,” and they’re saying it’s hard to even get your film reviewed in Los Angeles. Which is strange, considering Los Angeles is still ostensibly the home of our industry. There’s something deeply wrong with that. But, you know, look at “Anora” winning the Oscar for best picture, that’s a spark of hope for me. It’s not all doom and gloom. But I hear what you’re saying. Our movie played Tribeca two frickin’ years ago and it’s just now coming out.
On the other hand, the timing feels right to me somehow. You know. The way things are in America now. The climate of things (pause). I’ll leave it at that.
“Eric LaRue” opens April 4 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.; www.siskelfilmcenter.org. Streaming on April 11.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
